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Colin O'Neill


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Just back from a weekend in northern Ireland and on ferry met a few young lads from the motherwell youth side. Apparently psycho took a heart attack a month ago and the lads were over from the club to pay him a visit. According to the lads he's on the mend which is good news.

 

A bit disappointed that it took a chance meeting with youth players to hear about it though as he is a real cult hero and legend.

 

Hope the club are planning to bring him over when he has fully recovered .

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You do wonder what he, and Motherwell, might have continued to achieve, had his career not been ended prematurely (by Willie Miller of Hibs was it?).

 

He crammed a lot into his couple of seasons in the 'Well first team, almost all of it good. You had the brilliant second half of the 88'89 season, the Cooper inspired 89'90 campaign which saw us just a couple of points away from a European place and ofcourse things culminated in the Cup win in 90'91.

 

Maybe not such a coincidence that things took a major turn for the worse when he had to retire.

 

You think of Colin O'Neill and you think of the Peter Grant incident, the goal in the Semi Final, the "Hugo Sanchez eat your heart out" celebration at Cappielpow and the daftie riding around the track at half-time on a motorbike.

 

But it's often overlooked the commitment that was required from him to get to a point to make things like that happen, like McLean destroying him in training to get him to a point where he considered him match fit - I seem to remember a stone and a half's weight loss mentioned - or the infamous puking up before every game to prepare himself for battle.

 

He's some man, and if he's ill I'm fairly sure he'll be battling it head on like he used to do on the park.

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Absolute gem of a man! He took me and my wife out for a slap up dinner in Glasgow then a few drinks with my old man for sending him a copy of the cup winning DVD. Some of his stories were brilliant, I was completely star struck. If anyone has any contact details for him, I wouldn't mind being able to send him my best wishes.

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Just to confirm, it was the guys from the Motherwell Community Trust who were over in Larne... sadly most of us are a bit old to be described as youth players these days!

 

Good trip though and the hospitality was great with 'Psycho' making sure we were well looked after with tickets for the Larne FC game and transport for a messy night in Belfast on Saturday.

 

 

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The only player I've ever seen trying to "run off" a broken leg!!

 

lasted 5 minutes before realising it wasn't going to heal itself!! ha I think that was against Hibs, so you were probably right that it would have been that wee animal Miller that did him!!

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You do wonder what he, and Motherwell, might have continued to achieve, had his career not been ended prematurely (by Willie Miller of Hibs was it?).

 

He crammed a lot into his couple of seasons in the 'Well first team, almost all of it good. You had the brilliant second half of the 88'89 season, the Cooper inspired 89'90 campaign which saw us just a couple of points away from a European place and ofcourse things culminated in the Cup win in 90'91.

 

Maybe not such a coincidence that things took a major turn for the worse when he had to retire.

 

You think of Colin O'Neill and you think of the Peter Grant incident, the goal in the Semi Final, the "Hugo Sanchez eat your heart out" celebration at Cappielpow and the daftie riding around the track at half-time on a motorbike.

 

But it's often overlooked the commitment that was required from him to get to a point to make things like that happen, like McLean destroying him in training to get him to a point where he considered him match fit - I seem to remember a stone and a half's weight loss mentioned - or the infamous puking up before every game to prepare himself for battle.

 

He's some man, and if he's ill I'm fairly sure he'll be battling it head on like he used to do on the park.

 

Terrific player, no disrespect to the midfield that took us to third place in 93/94 but I often wondered might we not have done even better if O'Neil hadn't had that injury and was the same player as he was in 90/91 alongside Lambert and O'Donnell!

 

Hope he on the mend, one of my all time favourite players.

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The only player I've ever seen trying to "run off" a broken leg!!

 

lasted 5 minutes before realising it wasn't going to heal itself!! ha I think that was against Hibs, so you were probably right that it would have been that wee animal Miller that did him!!

Murder McLeod was it not?

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